Finance Minister for stash hunt in India

New Delhi: Calling upon income-tax officials to also focus on unearthing black money within the country, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday showed confidence that tax collection during the current fiscal would exceed budget estimate.

Though the government is making full efforts to bring back the black money stashed abroad, the finance minister said senior officers of IT should focus their efforts to unearth black money within the country which is quite large.

He said the job of the tax officers is very difficult in the sense that on the one hand they have to achieve the tax collection targets and on the other hand to play the role of tax facilitator for the assessee.

Mr Jaitley was speaking at two-day annual conference of the senior officers of IT department. The minister said that officers are duty bound to work in a non-adversarial, non-intrusive, transparent and fair manner, yet they have to deal firmly with those trying to evade taxes.

Mr Jaitley also hoped that the revenue targets fixed for direct taxes for the current financial year 2014-15 would not only be achieved but would also be surpassed. The current financial year’s target for direct tax collections stands at Rs 7,36,221 crore.